Approach to pop culture quotes in fiction writing
I am contemplating writing a fictional character [nerd] who speaks in a pop culture references. I appreciate this question somewhat overlaps
Referencing modern pop culture in science fiction
The concept is a period piece so I see the use of quotes dating the work as an advantage.
The character would quote single lines of pop songs, though probably not exactly. What I'm worried about is the legality of quoting copyrighted material.
Is a single line precisely quoted a copyright infringement? What if it's approximately quoted? What if there's a foil character who attributes the quotes?
For example, say something bad happens
A: They must be out of their brilliant minds
B: I heard that somewhere [thinks]
A: furniture
B: what?
A: [Hums tunelessly]
B: oh yeah... 1986. Peaked at 21.
A: [gapes] high five dude
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
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1 answer
According to this question, you'd be in trouble if you quoted entire songs, but single lines should be okay. Making the quotes approximate would ensure you don't run into any legal issues, but would also likely prevent your readers from getting the references, which would defeat the entire purpose. So only do that as a last resort, if your publisher objects to the unedited quotes.
What if there's a foil character who attributes the quotes?
I think this is a bad idea; not from a legal standpoint, but from a writing standpoint. The sample dialogue you provided seems very, very clunky, and depending on how bad the "bad thing" is, it may also come across as very jarring and out-of-place to have the characters suddenly high-fiving each other over pop-culture references.
I must confess I'm not familiar with your example song lyric, but if I was, and I had to read six lines of dialogue explaining it, it would be a bit tedious. And if I understood all your references, and you explained them every single time... it would get annoying.
If you really want to attribute all this character's quotes - or have some way of explaining them for those who don't recognise them - I'd take the approach recommended in this question and have some kind of "Acknowledgements" section at the back of your book where you can list all the songs you referenced. That way you're still attributing the lyrics without having to stop the action every five minutes while you do so.
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